By Meghan Sloan, MA

This post comes directly from the field! Meghan Sloan (see
picture above), one of our fantastic staff members from the science
laboratory in Expedition Health writes:

In late January I visited Mrs. Waage's class at McLain
Community High School to talk about the coolest job I've ever had:
A museum scientist and laboratory staff member, and to discuss the
Genetics of Taste research that we are conducting at the Denver
Museum of Nature & Science.

The best part of my talk that day was showing the students how
taste bud density differs from person to person by having the
students stain each other's tongues blue. We found out that
counting taste buds on wiggly tongues is quite hard to do, but that
indeed each student had a unique pattern of fungiform papillae (the
bumps on our tongues that contain taste buds)! Students also
determined their taster status by taking a taste test to see if
they could taste the bitter compound called PROP that we study in
the Genetics of Taste lab. Finally, the students learned how to
collect a DNA sample without it getting contaminated, something
that is so important to ensuring good DNA results. Not only
did we spread the blue tongue love, I think we also spread an
interest in science and will hopefully see some of these students
in the lab!